A One Man Crime Wave

 

 

     I'd like to think if Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he would've punched Donald Trump in the face. In Medora, North Dakota the other day, Donald Trump took part in a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library alongside Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. As it often happens, the ribbon cutting ceremony involved gold-plated scissors.

     After they cut the ribbon, Trump then tried to slip the scissors into his jacket and eventually walked off with them. At this point in his life, Trump is like a Temu Auric Goldfinger, the Bond super villain who's obsessed with gold (He even has his own Oddjob in Steven Cheung, for fuck's sake). If he sees gold, he immediately grabs it.

     You might remember the time last year when professional Trump suck-up Gianni Infantino brought the FIFA trophy to the Oval Office and made the mistake of handing it to Trump. They had to practically pry it out of his grubby little hands after he asked, in all seriousness, "Can I keep it?"

     Hilary Shea, a licensed pathologist, put out a short video explaining the difference between a true kleptomaniac and someone with actual dementia. 

     "The stealing is usually a symptom of changes in the brain affecting memory, judgment, impulse control, or the ability to recognize ownership... I do not think that Donald Trump is actually, psychiatrically speaking, suffering from kleptomania. I do believe it is just one more sign and symptom of dementia. As always, Donald Trump has got to go."

     Considering his ongoing crime wave, especially since he stole the presidency again with Musk's help, it's very easy to conclude that Trump is a kleptomaniac. After all, his latest financial disclosures show that he hauled in $2,2 billion last year, a level of corruption that is, to use one of Trump's favorite phrases, the likes of which have never been seen before.

     But we've also seen just in this past year a serious degradation of his cognitive faculties. And when I saw Trump literally try to pocket those gold-plated scissors, I immediately thought of Barbara.

     In the last year she was living with me, long after her own dementia began presenting, Barbara got obsessed with a pair of scissors I kept in the kitchen drawer. We needed a pair for various things I regularly needed to do in the kitchen. But every so often, Barbara would remove them from the drawer and walk off with them. 

     I'd ask her to put them back and she'd always respond in a towering rage that "they're mine!" She'd developed this perverted sense of ownership.

     I'm seeing this in Trump and, naturally, it alarms me as it should alarm all of us. It got to the point Barbara couldn't or wouldn't get to the bathroom on time, or feed herself or even write her own name. And seeing her infantile sense of ownership reflected in Trump just scares the shit out of me.